Saturday, April 14, 2012

It's a FINE city.

After 2 weeks of chilled out beach time, rock climbing, slack lining, living in a bamboo hut, being visited by monkeys and badgers Werky and I decided we had to leave Tonsai before we ended up spending the rest of our trip there, or not leaving ever. Beautiful beaches, lush rainforest, lagoon hikes, and climbing rock faces filled our days, with each day bringing something new and beautiful to discover. At the end of each day we'd meet up with new found friends, with no prior meeting point discussed, and passed evenings playing pool on the beach, making pictures out of rock formations and chilling out over a beer or two. Truly a hard place to leave.

Needing new visas and something different we decided to make a visa run to Singapore, also a good excuse to visit Linds and Henrick who were living there. Singapore is one huge city that is also a country, with an amazing rail system. Coming from our 1 street beach paradise it was a bit of a culture shock going into a massive city and back into Western prices. $16 each for a bed in a dorm room, whaaaaaat? Regardless of how sterile and crazy Singapore seemed we were determined to have fun and succeeded in doing so. One of my favourite pastimes was to take  photos of funny signs telling you not to do things and the fine attached if you get caught doing so. One of Chris's favourite pastimes was seeing of many of these laws he could break in said photos without being caught. Our favourite was the 'No durian' signs on public transport (durian is a particularly smelly fruit).

It was great being to catch up with Linds and meet Henrick when he wasn't too busy working. We passed our days away visiting little India (amazing food), China town, going to Sentosa - a theme park island! Too cheap to pay to go into any of the theme park areas the 3 of us chilled on the beach, drank cocktails and swam in the horizon-less ocean (horizon-less due to the sheer amount of large boats moored just off the shore). Being back in a first world country was a massive culture shock,  but we both feel more prepared for coming home because of it.  It was amazing how quickly we readjusted to masses of security cameras everywhere, big brother always watching.

 After 4 days of exploring Singapore we had to finally make our decision, Philippines for diving, or Koh Tao for diving and Songkran? After careful consideration (read which one had cheaper flights) we went back up to Thailand and are now passing away our days on beautiful Koh Tao.

Weirdly looking forward to coming home, but am still loving every minute I have here =)